‘Secondly, some of the money has already been put out of reach. Not all, not by a long stretch, but I’ve just been told by Dan Milton, who’s the head of private banking for continental Europe, that they’ve managed to lock down almost a hundred million euros; it’s been moved into long-term investments that if Marina Quincy did try to get her hands on, she’d be forced through the courts – which I don’t think is something she’d want.’

Mateo looked at her with a concerned expression. ‘Legally, how defensible is that? Can the bank hide my father’s money, knowing he was intending to give it away?’

‘Well, obviously this is outside my remit, I’m not a banker per se. But my understanding is it would be a matter of what could be proved, if necessary. Steed’s line is that, officially, they know nothing about the intended gift. This information has come to the bank’s attention only through private conversations with you, not your father himself. Now, as their client of many years standing and chairman of the Mendoza Corporation, you are authorized to make trades on your father’s behalf and they haven’t received any official or formal directive from your father rescinding that authority or asking them to change or cease their trading patterns for him. Clearly, he must have been intending to inform and involve the bank in the disbursement of the gift – there’s no way he couldn’t – but the stroke has obviously prevented that from happening, for the time being anyway. So as things stand, it’s business as usual and the bank’s position – if challenged – would be that they’ve simply looked to protect his investments from a particularly volatile market: Brexit, trade wars with the US and China . . . They’d say they’ve been conservative, nothing more.’ She gave a hapless shrug.

He looked at her intently, beginning to seem reassured. ‘Okay, so they’ve protected one hundred million. But what about the rest of it – if and when my father wakes up and finishes what he’s started . . . What then? There’s half a billion euros still at stake.’

‘Well that’s why they’ve brought me in. If the lawyers and the bankers can’t stop your father from giving the money, I can work to stop her wanting it.’

He looked confused. ‘I don’t understand. How can you do that?’

‘There’s a thing called sudden wealth syndrome. You tend to see it in people who experience sudden windfalls – lottery winners for example. Almost without exception, a few years down the line, they’ll be divorced where they were previously happily married, lonely when they were previously sociable, suspicious where they were previously open. Because what people don’t realize is wealth doesn’t change attitudes to money, it exaggerates them. You’ve heard of the saying “caught, not taught”?’

He gave a shrug. ‘Sure.’

‘Well for someone like Marina, who has always had to dig in for what she’s got, had to get her hands dirty and fight . . . becoming rich overnight is not going to be the answer to all her problems, it’ll be the start of them. For someone who’s grown up having to take to survive, how will she cope with friends asking her to help them out, family members wanting her to pay off their mortgages, buy them a car? She doesn’t know how to be a donor, a benefactor. It doesn’t matter how good her intentions start out, in no time she’s going to become resentful that they’re asking, embittered that she feels guilty for saying no, suspicious they all want more from her, paranoid they’re only with her for the money, isolated because who can she trust . . . It happens all the time. Living happily with wealth is something that has to be caught, but from what I can glean from the report, she has no one to guide her, no examples to follow.’ She gave a pitying shrug. ‘She has no idea how difficult her life would become.’